The woods . Long before small Red Riding Hood set off for her grandmother ’s house , we load that dark , damp billet with our veneration . Full of brambles and beasts , the forest are where we get lose , where we stumble upon gingerbread house , witches , werewolves , vampiresand nipper - snatchers .

So , take up with some woods and add a boogeyman . Everybody get it on to reverence a bogeyman . have ’s make him faceless for universality and tot creepiness . Make him tall and weirdly tight fitting and give him long , tentaclelike arms to up the ante . So , somewhere in the frightening woods there ’s a thin , faceless bugaboo with long , long limbs who tempt children to him . Once he gets them , they ’re hold out forever .

So far , so safe . The plot is familiar . Now add two more crucial element : Photoshop and the Internet . conflate all these elements together and you ’ve get a ethnic phenomenon — a nightmare figure appearing in multiplying stories by multiple authors . " bona fide " vintage photographs document his existence somewhere on the blurry delimitation between fiction and manufactured reality . And that mete blurs so much , the booger begin to creep into the veridical world . This is Slender Man .

Slender Man Begins

Far back in the mists of prison term , in 2009 to be accurate , a Photoshop whiz named Eric Knudsen , using thenom de guerreVictor Surge , decided to post some of his work on the comedy website Something Awful . On a thread titled " create paranormal image , " he upload vintage photos mend to include a tall , scrawny , faceless trope with prospicient tentaclelike weapon system lurk in the background near small fry at manoeuvre [ source : Stampler ] . The invention became ameme .

As a meme , Slender Man has had a robust life on the website Creepypasta , a forum where masses brand spooky stories . He also appears in YouTube videos , alternate reality games , blogs , rooter prowess , cosplay and wiki Sir Frederick Handley Page .

As Slender Man ’s mien grows , we ’ve con that not only does he abduct children , but he ’s also open of cause something called " slender illness , " with symptoms that let in nausea and retch blood . He can stimulate madness and an affliction cognize as " scribble in , " which causes the great unwashed to draw and indite nonstop . In many cases , work pay to Slender Man claims not to be fiction but , rather , infotainment cloth register his beingness . An cyclopaedia - panache entry on the Creepypasta Wiki mull on his long history , even suggest that certain ancient cave painting include depictions of him . Egyptian hieroglyphs from 5,000 years ago and nineteenth - century German wood engraving are also included in his bloodline report [ reservoir : Creepypasta ] .

This " grounds " of his existence seems to have made Slender Man funnily real for some multitude . And this mental confusion between fact and fiction is what brought Slender Man out of the vague corner of the cyberspace and into the rough glare of mainstream metier . It would n’t be the first time that a faux - documentary fabrication would have real - populace consequences . Think of Orson Welles ' infamous programme of " The War of the Worlds , " during which some listeners were win over that a real Martian invasion was underway . In the case of Slender Man , however , the people who became dangerously confused were 12 - year - old girls .

Slender Man in the Real World

It ’s Saturday , May 31 , 2014 , in the Milwaukee suburbia of Waukesha , Wisconsin . Three girls wake up from a sleepover , feed ring and strawberry mark for breakfast , play clothes - up for a bit and then guide to a nearby park . Bella , the most sociable of the three , walks in front . Morgan , the idealist , walk behind with the third girl , Anissa . As they stroll , Morgan shows Anissa a steak tongue she ’s hidden under her crown . It ’s a signaling that a long - design consequence is about to take place .

At a public restroom , Anissa and Morgan half - heartedly rough Bella up . But Morgan , who is prostrate to pretty quicksilver behavior , pause off and starts singing and pacing back and forth . A shortsighted clip afterwards , the three missy play hide - and - seek . Urged on by Anissa , Morgan jumps on top of Bella andstabsher 19 times in the arm , leg , pancreas , liver and stomach , narrowly missing an arteria . Anissa guides the wobbly , screaming Bella deeper into the woods and tells her to lie down . Morgan try out to stem Bella ’s bleeding with a leaf , and then she and Anissa tramp through the woods to the nearestWalmartwhere they moisten off the pedigree in the restroom .

Bella live on , drag herself to a route where a passing cyclist stops to help her . When the cops interview Anissa and Morgan , the girl explain that by killing Bella they hoped to be initiate into Slender Man ’s band . The rake sacrifice would take in their entry so they could be numbered among his minions and live with him in his forest planetary house .

During the press conference that pursue , the police drag attention to the Slender Man myth ’s influence on the attack and urge parents to be aware of the danger . Children must be learn the difference between fabrication and reality . Suddenly , Slender Man is international news . Who he is and what he means for the culture at with child become hotly debated topic [ source : Miller ] .

But blaming Slender Man misses the mark . Many masses who commit acts of violence abduce figures from pop culture as their inspirations . In 1981 , after seeing the film " Taxi Driver " at least 15 time and drive by a desire to get the attention of actress Jodi Foster , John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan . James Holmes , the young man who kill 12 people and hurt 70 at a screening of a Batman moving-picture show in 2014 , take to be Batman ’s curse , the Joker . In 2009 , Anthony Conley strangled his pal to death with his bare hands , afterwards say that he identified with the type of Dexter , the serial sea wolf from the boob tube show of the same name . The inclination conk on and on [ source : Lifshitz ] .

When question , Anissa foreswear her belief in Slender Man . After all , she was n’t the one who in reality carried out the stabbing . Morgan , the daughter who did , profess to still consider that Slender Man is real . She ’s been diagnose with a rarified soma of former - onrush schizophrenic psychosis [ source : Vielmetti ] . Mental illness , and how we as a society deal with it , could be the real issue at the tenderness of the Slender Man stabbing and possibly some of the violent acts cited above .

Slender Man as Digital Folklore

What arefolktales ? They ’re the stories a culture secernate itself collectively . In telling and retelling , add and subtracting , diverging and give , we create narratives that make ever - increasing import and major power . To use the academic jargon of the day , folktales articulate the anxiety that preoccupy us . Slender Man intercept into a train of thought that ’s a nigh constant in folktales from Rumpelstiltskin to Hansel and Gretel : the reverence of mislay fry .

In recent years , more than one assimilator has indicate that Slender Man is a manifestation of a new kind of myth - making gaining traction in the net age . visualize in this twinkle , Slender Man ’s proliferating storylines on the Creepypasta site are a kind of hyper - folklore , where the old mode of collectively establish a set of stories around a given type have been sped up and magnify by 21st - C engineering science [ source : Singal ] .

And while folktale have always hovered in the half - light between fantasy and reality , this quality has been ratchet down up in the digital eld . Photographs altered to appear literal and proffered as further documentary grounds of Slender Man ’s existence add a proportion of authenticity beyond anything an old - school storyteller could conjure when trying to convert listeners that werewolf or other monsters really exist . Of course , suspension of incredulity is still necessary , but for those already predisposed to engross , at least temporarily , in magic thinking , Photoshop helps .

But despite these fresh elements , it seems that Slender Man , along with otherdigital folktales , fulfills a map in the great unwashed ’s lives similar to that of the old - fashioned story . He ’s like a post - modern mashup of the Headless Horseman , the Hansel - and - Gretel witch and the Grim Reaper . In other quarrel , he ’s a unexampled and creepy manifestation of Death .

That so many kids are drawn to the tales despite the fact that they make up the bulk of his victims speak to children ’s preoccupation with fatality rate as they produce into adolescence . For stripling peculiarly , who are task with learning to face some of the grimmer reality of adulthood , a figure like Slender Man can leave a " symbolic vessel " through which to take on out some of their newfound fears [ source : Singal ] .

Slender Man Lives

Back in 2006 , afilm studentnamed Alex Kralie began filming a task he title " Marble Hornets . " As filming progressed , his crew begin complaining of their director ’s more and more bad temper . Then , a few months into the project , Alex debar filming indefinitely . Dismayed by the thought of so much work move to waste , his protagonist and fellow film scholarly person , Jason , enquire to see the footage . Alex hold on the status that they never peach about it . Unnerved , Jason put the footage aside and forgot about it . A short time afterward , Alex transferred to another shoal , and the two friends fell out of touch . Jason unpacked the footage from the " Marble Hornets " project and commence determine , upload it to YouTube as he went [ source : Nolfi ] .

This is the opening premise of the Web serial " Marble Hornets " by Troy Wagner and Joseph DeLage . While the Slender Man mythos maturate in multiple musical genre and on various internet site , nowhere has he gained more popularity than in the YouTube serial publication " Marble Hornets . " As the series unfold , it becomes apparent that the reason Alex abandoned his project was because of a mysterious , faceless villain referred to as The Operator — Slender Man by another name [ source : Nolfi ] .

Though Wagner and DeLage created the series , it ’s been look up to as an ARG , an alternating ( or augmented ) reality secret plan . In essence , this refers to the fact that the story has multiple authors and uses various devices to give the impression that it ’s non - fiction . Fans create and upload addition or side stories in the course of text , film and liveliness . For illustration , aYouTubechannel called " totheark " has dozens of supplemental videos , and in August 2015 an turnout telephone THAC get going upload a spinoff serial publication phone " Clear Lakes 44 " to the " Marble Hornets " channel , since renamed " Clear Lakes 44 / Marble Hornets " [ beginning : television receiver Tropes ] .

It ’s scarcely surprising that the atomic number 47 CRT screen did n’t equalise up with this myth successfully . Slender Man ’s real home , the surroundings in which he fly high , is the seething , fecund swampland from whence he spring : the Internet .

Lots More Information

It seems inevitable that Creepypasta receive a great hatful of negative aid in the Wake Island of the Wisconsin stabbing . The web site ’s deliberate cause to blur fact and fiction was unsafe , some felt . But of course of study , that blur is what makes it popular . The decision maker of Creepypasta has been quoted inspire parent to instruct their minor how to differentiate fancy from reality . Not bad advice , but the truth is most Thomas Kid can do that from a relatively former age . Those who ca n’t might have deeper issues . It seems to me that what lies behind the captivation with account like the Slender Man stabbing is a societal involuntariness to make do compassionately with mental illness . Strange stabbings and school shot might sell the news , but at some item we have to check sensationalizing random wildness while denounce the mental wellness issues that might be bring factors .

Sources